Remembering Frances

Ken and Frances spent a lot of time on the road. In those days, traveling salesmen were on the road a lot.

It allowed Frances to see a lot of the country, which must have been exciting for a girl from Cleveland whose 14 brothers and sisters had each sought their own path. It was an adventure, and it was brave to set out to see post-World War II America with a husband she hadn’t been married to very long.

They were alone for the most part, turning up in cities where they knew no one. At the time, a first-class letter was the primary form of long-distance personal communication.

Frances was only 4 feet, 10 inches tall and weighed less than 100 pounds, so it wasn’t all that hard for Ken to beat her up. As it turned out, he was prone to that sort of thing.

There were no shelters for abused women in most places then, and no easy method of research to find help of any sort. She never learned to drive and Ken controlled the money. Fear and need allowed the abuse to continue for more than a decade.

In Oklahoma, there are more than 18,000 felony assaults reported each year related to domestic violence. There were 1,453 rapes reported in 2008.

The state ranks ninth in the nation in the rate of women murdered by men. In 92 percent of those cases, the victim knew the man who killed her and in the majority of those the perpetrator was the victim’s husband, ex-husband or boyfriend.

The only shelter exclusively for abused women and children in Oklahoma County is run by the YWCA. The shelter helps more than 1,200 women and children each year.

I was one of a few men who attended the organization’s Women Who Care Share fundraising luncheon Monday at the Skirvin Hilton Hotel in downtown Oklahoma City. We were all moved by one survivor’s story of escape from an abusive boyfriend and how he had, literally, held her life in his hands. She made it to the YWCA and, thanks to that organization, she’ll make it in Oklahoma.

But what made me want to reach into the envelope, extract my check and add a zero to it were eight young children. They ranged in age from about 3 to 5 years and they took the stage to sing a silly song about a snowball. Those eight faces beamed at the audience, and for an event built on a theme of the light within, there was none brighter than that shining through those young eyes. My 3-year-old spends his days at a private, privileged preschool; the children on the stage look no different, but spend their days at the shelter. It was too easy to see my son’s face in their faces, and when they sang Santa Claus is Coming to Town I wondered, sadly, who would make sure he came to visit those children.

Frances loved children – all children. She would have made sure Santa made it to the shelter. She got out of the abusive marriage because Ken finally beat her up so badly she was admitted to a hospital and she was protected there. She found the strength to get a divorce, a place to live and a bookkeeping job. That wasn’t easy in the 1950s, especially for someone tiny, scared, and 1,500 miles away from her nearest relative. It’s not easy now.

But had she not managed to get away from that man, she would never have met my father.

Seventy-one percent of the population knows an abuse victim. That means, statistically, that five or six of the people at my table know a victim, and it turns out one of them was me. I had to contemplate how much pain and fear Frances would have been spared if a shelter like the YWCA’s had been available.

EPILOGUE

This piece led to a suggestion that I host a table of men at the Women Who Care Share luncheon the following year. We dubbed it Frances' Table and the eight of us wore yellow ties because that was her favorite color. The next year I hosted two tables of men and in 2011 the YWCA launched the Engaging Men breakfast, where the make contingent grew past 200 and I was honored to present the keynote remarks. The event is still held each August; I still host two tables and we still wear yellow ties.